Skeleton (bare to me to my bones, I don't mind)
by The Readers Muse
Summary: Convince me. Convince me. Convince me.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's the Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** Spoilers up to season four: 4x13 "After" – but is set in season three: 3x12 "Clear," in terms of the story line. This particular fic is meant what might have happened if it was Glenn instead of Rick that came across 'Orange Backpack Guy.'

 **Warnings:** Contains: season three au, canon appropriate violence/blood/gore, adult language, angst, drama, depression, PTSD, brief discussion of a background physically disabled character/injury.

 **Skeleton (bare to me to my bones, I don't mind)**

"What's your name?" the kid asked. Because that was what he was, a kid. Asian. Stupidly young in the face but old before his time in the eyes. He'd probably been in college – university – struggling to get by on dollar store ravioli and textbooks that were worth more than the entire contents of his dorm room.

"Devlin. Devlin Scordato," he answered, marvelling at the way it came out on the other side. Voice hoarse and rough from disuse. When was the last time he'd said a word to another human being? He couldn't remember. Weeks? No. He hadn't seen anyone but them – the biters, the infected – for close to a month. _Months_ maybe? There'd been that man who'd taken pot-shots at him from the roof of that strip-store mall a few towns over, but he'd been too busy running to say anything at the time.

 _Months._

 _Christ._

"How many walkers have you killed?"

"Five," he replied, scratching his hand through the stubble on his chin, trying not to flinch when the kid made an aborted movement, finger pressing light like a threat across the trigger. You'd think he would have lost track by now. All that running and hiding and weeks between seeing any living thing that wasn't a marmot or lonely deer. But he still remembered each and every one.

"How many people have you killed?"

"Five," he responded, throat aching. Feeling the itch of old ghosts trying to burrow their way through his skin and into the foundations – infesting and unapologetic – until he shrugged his shoulders and met the kid's gaze again.

"Why?"

"Because they were trying to eat me," he answered without humor. Feeling like the words fell a bit more than flat – pathetic – when the line of the kid's mouth tightened another impossible fraction. Hard and unmoveable, like by his expression alone he could pull the words he needed to hear out into the open.

 _And maybe he could._

 _He'd stopped being surprised by the things people could do a long time ago._

"Five people or five walkers?"

"Sometimes I wonder if they aren't the same thing," he countered, watching him through the glare as a distant oil-slick hazed across the road. Feeling something in him flat-line as he remembered all the worst parts of each one. Like the bloated body of his neighbour spread-eagled and nude in the flowerbed of his front lawn, devouring something small and whimpering. Like the pink t-shirt splattered with rust-dried red as the young girl appeared in the doorway of the house he'd been raiding. Face a nightmare of road-rash and exposed milk teeth. Like-

"That why you are out here, in the open, no weapons, taking a chance?" the kid cracked, giving him a slow once over this time like he could all but _smell_ the crazy on him. He didn't blame him. It had been a risk. But so was trying to make it out here alone. Trying to make it at all these days, now that he was thinking about it.

 _God, he was so tired._

He laughed, humorless and somewhere beyond exhaustion.

"Probably."

"Answer the question," the kid retorted, determined, gun barrel wavering. "How many people have you killed?"

The pause wasn't pregnant, it was _barren_. Lifeless and grey in scale as his heart squeezed painfully tight in his chest. He'd gotten by up till now with his own flawed reasoning. The way he'd justified it – what he'd had to do – how he'd survived. Convinced that it had to be this way or he'd lose whatever part of him from before that was still left. A part that could still look its reflection in the eye. A part that Claudia would still recognize if this all turned out to be some horrible dream and he woke up beside her the next time he closed his eyes.

"How many?"

"Two," he whispered, nails biting bloody half-moons into the calloused insides of his palms.

"Why?"

* * *

Claudia had made him granola. Filling the house with the savory, rich smell as she gripped the railings he'd installed around the kitchen island and wheeled herself around in her chair. Humming happily to herself as she took out the trays and set them aside to cool, endlessly patient with the miniature-mountains his hiking gear had made out of the counters. Knowing how important this hiking trip was to him.

A Paleo-anthropologist had to be able to rough it after all. His field assignment was in South Africa and the mountains a few hours from their own front door were the closest equivalent to the harsh and unforgiving landscape they would encounter once they got to the dig site. The hiking trip was more of a dry run than anything. A test of both himself and his equipment before the field-work portion of his P.H.D finally got underway. He and another one of the guys in the program were going together, thinking for about a week, maybe a week and a half tops. No problem.

It was the first trip he'd taken since Claudia's accident, so he knew he wasn't the only one on edge. Inadvertently becoming a test in and of itself as Claudia kept herself busy, making sure she had everything she needed, exactly where she could reach it before he left. She hadn't called her mother to come stay while he was gone. And while he had mixed feelings about that, he knew she had medical appointments scattered throughout the next few days. Fittings for a new dual prosthetic she'd agreed to test out for a grassroots company that was still relying on crowdfunding to get their product out there. She was determined to hold onto whatever agency the accident hadn't taken away from her and he was loathe to do anything to shatter that drive. Not after everything they'd been through to get this far – _together_.

In a lot of ways, that trip was going to be a sink or swim – for the _both_ of them.

He remembered only bits and pieces of that day. The way she'd smiled when he caught her in mid-wheel and spun her around, kissing her like language as she whacked him playfully with the spatula. He remembered the radio crackling in the background, the announcer going on about flu-shots and that new virus that seemed to have sprung up overnight.

He remembered tearing apart half his office, thesis rough drafts flying around in mis-matched clouds of papery-white, looking for the batteries to his head-lamp. But he didn't remember if he'd told her he loved her before he'd pulled out of the driveway. Waving as she wheeled herself to the edge of the ramp by the front door he and his friends had built the day before she came home from the hospital. Blowing a kiss at him as the freckled dimples on her cheeks threatened to swallow the expression entirely.

 _That was always the worst part._

 _Not knowing._

Because the truth was, he hadn't realized anything was really wrong until he and Edwin had made their way back to the parking lot after a week and a half of roughing it. Tired, sore, and reeking, but flushed with success. Laughing and joking despite the eerie quiet as they passed a couple of abandoned backpacks propped up by the outhouse at the start of the trail.

There had been the flyers tucked under the windshield wipers. Rain-washed and stuck together in one big mushy pulp. Leaving him with snatches of barely legible words. Words like quarantine zones and virus. Words like evacuation orders and Marshal Law and what looked like instructions to stay away from the cities until the Park Ranger had given the all clear.

The phones at the ranger station were dead.

So were the ones at the abandoned gas station half a mile from the park gates.

And so was Edwin by the time his jeep ran out of gas and they were forced to start walking.

In a manner of speaking.

* * *

"Fine," the kid remarked, flicking dark hair out of his eyes as he chanced a glance towards the horizon. Judging the angle of the sun and how many hours they had left before nightfall. The sight was familiar, of course, but oddly absurd coming from another person. One of the perils of being alone too long, probably.

"Convince me," the kid said again, looking at him with different eyes then when he'd first unfolded himself from the seat of the car and leveled his gun at him. Different after he'd listen to him talk himself hoarse. Feeling a sunburn creep along the back of his neck as he locked his knees to keep them from buckling under the weight the memories he'd been forced to relive. "Why should I help you?"

The irony was, despite all this time alone, he didn't actually have a good answer.

He wet his lips, poised on the edge of a very real precipice where he wasn't sure if he wanted to let himself fall or pray for someone to catch him. The straps of his backpack cut into his shoulders as those two awkward, jaded little words rebounded inside his skull. The same two words Claudia had said after the accident when he'd pulled out that little black velvet box and got down on one knee just like he'd been planning for years. Only in this version she was in the hospital and there was an endless gap of space between the foot of the bed and where her legs used to be. Fighting angry, frustrated tears as she looked up at him and whispered.

 _Convince me._

 _Convince me._

 _Convince me._

 _Convince-_

And suddenly, he just knew.

"Because you don't have to," he started, cautious but voice already cracking – strained. "Because we are not just products of nature, but nurture as well. Raymond Dart, he was an anatomist – anthropologist. In 1924 he discovered the first fossilized remains of- _Christ_ , it doesn't matter. He founded the theory of the 'killer ape.' Hypothesising that given the oddly shaped animals bone found with the body – tools, maybe even weapons - that this was proof that we are inherently violent. That as a species, it was already written into our genetic codes long before the first human being came around. But I don't believe that, we aren't killers. _We aren't them_. And sometimes…sometimes we need to be reminded of that."

The kid's eyes were more darkness than they were light. Expression pinched like he'd tasted something that he didn't quite know how to feel about as the curl of his free hand ghosted across the knife still sheathed in his belt. Like there were a hundred and one ways he could say no and get back into that car and just drive off and his only problem was picking which one to use first.

"Please, I don't want to be alone anymore."

The words surprised him coming up.

But the kid only nodded.

Like that whole mess of syllables and second generation accent brogues was what he'd been waiting for this entire god damned time. Leaving him almost shaking with it as the gun slowly lowered and the frown lines between the kid's eyes eased a fraction.

"We have to make a stop in King's County, but just- get in," the kid finally sighed, motioning for him to take off the backpack and climb into the passenger seat. Patting him down for any weapons before he let him collapse in the seat. Legs static-strewn with pins and needles.

He meant to say thank you, meant to ask for the kids name or even rescue his beat up backpack from where the kid had shoved it in the back. But honestly, he fell asleep – faced smooshed unattractively into the cutting line of the seatbelt, lulled by the low purr of the engine before they'd travelled more than half a mile.

And for the first time in a long time, he dreamt of a future.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This is now complete.

 **Reference:** I wrote the majority of this while listening to "Technically, missing" by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from the 'Gone Girl' soundtrack. I recommend reading with it playing in the background.

 _Devlin:_ An Irish and Scottish name meaning: "unlucky" or "unfortunate."

 _Scordato:_ Italian name meaning: "forgotten" or "left behind."

 _Claudia_ : Biblical girls name meaning: "lame" or "injured."

 _Edwin:_ German name meaning "happy friend."


End file.
